What’s your recommendation on the best AI tools for small business?

I don’t need another app to cover just one thing like market research, coding, marketing, etc. Wasted enough money with different subscriptions that can all essentially be one app. 

My main problem: We need to use it with many teams, so sharing, collab, and management features are a must. Most AI tools right now are standalone - employees access cool LLMs, but I need to see how AI is used, optimize budget, share chats. 

Best AI tools for business I saw people recommending: 

1. ChatGPT - a classic. We tried the Enterprise package, just too expensive for what we get. Marketing likes to use GPT, Devs ask for Claude. Plus, the minimum seat requirement is too big for our small business. 
2. Portkey - seems to be the best option for devs, with Gateway, Observability, Guardrails, Governance and Prompt Management. But for other non-tech teams, that’s too complex - we’ll need another AI productivity tool, but we’re trying to minimize budget and have everything in one place.
3. Perplexity - after I tested it, it’s definitely the best AI tool for business productivity, but no idea how to integrate it in a team, like sharing files and working on projects together.
4. nexos.ai - still new in the market and under the radar, but covers all the productivity features + more dev tools, orchestration, API. Also noticed pretty advanced observability. Recent Assistants feature is sharable and fully customizable, and we’d get access to multiple LLMs, not just one.

I’m thinking of going with nexos first and testing the free trial. What do you think? 

We often ask why business in India is not flourishing at the rate of USA, I might have got the answer to that.

I started a humble e-commerce venture. Recently, this guy or should I say goon ordered an action camera from us. Unfortunately, that very unit had some issue so we basically told him so and said to him to wait for 2-3 days till we get the replacement from the brand.

We sent the unit to the brand, but the product had some issues. So, we get back to him saying so and asking him if he wanted any other product or camera listed on our website with extra discount. Now all this way happening within the delivery period we have promised him. But he was abusive from the very start, saying cuss words and what not to me and my team. As he requested we initiated a full refund to his original bank account.

He began posting derogatory, obscene, highly sexualized posts, and highly defamatory content about me, my family, and my business — even after receiving the refund and reimbursement. He went further, creating fake videos claiming we never refunded him, despite proof on our Razorpay dashboard.

When we confronted him, he said that my bank has charged you back and you have not refunded. When we asked him to provide chargeback documents, after sharing screenshot of our RazorPay Dashboard with no chargeback received. He went silent.

He even went on to say that our address, names etc listed on our website are totally wrong. Even after we provided him our GSTIN and trademark certificate.

So, this guy is there just to extort money from you by posting false content. He is saying that he is a graduate and had high paying jobs and whatnot, but all that is bullshit. And he is not doing this just to us, there is a pattern. Check his MouthShut Profile - https://www.mouthshut.com/arun_112, he has posted such content about nearly 77 businesses in order to extort money from them and then has posted video of each of them on his YouTube Channel.

Even his website where he says that they are a registered NGO, but you can check the website is just so shitty for a registered NGO and I was not even able to find the NGO registered with any of the government portals - https://ngodarpan.gov.in/#/search-ngoc, while in their procedure they have mentioned that there NGO is operating from 25 Years - https://www.consumergrievance.com/procedure.pdf

Even the YouTube Channel is trying to impersonate government bodies by titling it as "Consumer Complaint - Consumer Court" using it as a clickbait to entice users to get more views. Check this lawsuit - https://indiankanoon.org/doc/130428480/?type=print, where they got an innocent customer stuck for Defamation. While Arun easily declined to visit the court in Delhi, the customer had to travel 2000 km for the hearing of this case, apparently.

I am sure their internal mechanisms are all fraud and maybe a front for something highly illegal. They just ask the initial INR 500 to get the customer within their vicious net. Then get them stuck in the middle of more lawsuits to extort money from them. The irony, of the fact is that they claim in their procedure form that they do not advertise on their websites, but their website was filled with our website's ads using Google Adsense.

He has said on his website that he is a registered lawyer, but you can search yourself in Government's Database that he is not even registered with any Bar Councils and is not even a lawyer - https://probono-doj.in/list-of-advocates.html?AdvocateSearch%5Bbar_council%5D=13&page=2&per-page=50

This entire incident highlights a deeper issue with India’s business ecosystem, it’s not just about infrastructure, funding, or policies; it’s about trust and accountability. In the U.S., strong consumer protection frameworks exist, but there are also clear consequences for malicious actors who weaponize those very protections for personal gain.

Until then, every founder has to fight not just market competition but also a broken system where integrity gets tested at every step.

I’m sharing this not just for myself but for every Indian entrepreneur who dares to build. If you’ve faced similar extortion or harassment, let’s connect — together, we can create a stronger voice to demand change.

PS - We are already pursuing legal notice against him, if you have been wronged by this goon or his fake NGO. Please DM me we can club our notices together.

for myself I think it might be hormozis "make an offer so good people would feel stupid saying no" i know that its masic but it somehow helped me to realize it

For marketing "no one cares about you nor what you do, give them a reason to care" would be the one.

both very general but both helped me tremendously in the things i have done so far.

I run a small business and have a client who is refusing to pay for work we’ve already delivered. Under our agreement, they are legally required to pay, and we’ve already tried all the friendly and professional ways of resolving it.

At this point, I’m looking for a reliable solution to actually recover the money owed. I don’t mind paying a percentage to a service or agency if they can collect successfully, but I don’t want to waste more time chasing.

Has anyone here dealt with this? What’s the best way to move forward - collections, legal action, or something else?

Thanks in advance for any advice.

I’ve been learning social media marketing, and really focusing on content creation and video editing. It’s what interests me more, I would love to expand and get good at SEO to diversify, but that’s for another topic for another time thats not going to come for a good while. My main question is: since I’ve been learning these skills and I’m starting to feel pretty comfortable, when should I take my skills to the marketplace on platforms like upwork and Fiverr and etc.? I know the importance of just starting, get that experience and just start. But I also don’t want to prematurely get into the waters to drown.

In the beginning I am more than willing to do some things for free or for cheap, just to build that experience and portfolio to then justify my prices for my future thereafter clients.

Hello everyone,

I'm from Manipur, which is in northeastern India, and I work with a group of women artisans who use Kouna, a kind of reed that grows nearby, to create handcrafted goods. People primarily use it to make baskets, mats, and now even planters because it is entirely natural, environmentally friendly, and biodegradable.

I've started to take selling these products seriously, but I'm stalled by one major question: 👉 How can I locate bulk buyers, either in India or abroad (export)?

I don't want to waste money chasing phoney leads, and I don't have access to large databases or buyer contacts. I reasoned that perhaps someone here could help me find the way:

Where can I find actual buyer data?

How do I go about getting their attention?

Additionally, please DM me if anyone here (or someone you know) is interested in sustainable or eco-friendly products and is searching for genuine handcrafted goods.

Many thanks for reading 🙏. Any advice or pointers would be greatly appreciated

I hate Marketing, and I’m a marketer…

Social Media isn’t a business’s best friend anymore, and Interest Media is what’s working.

So what do business owners do?

Everyone sounds the same now

Here’s how to monetize blah blah blah

Here’s my fave AI Tools blah blah blah

Everything is written by AI, and we can tell by your long hyphens in the sentences —, it’s not about…its about, and starting sentences with BECAUSE and AND, and oh man, the amount of emojis makes me want to puke!

YOU ALL SOUND THE SAME!

What we did WAS working, it isn’t anymore, and people aren’t being real.

Your engagement didn’t explode because of a method; YOU USED ADS.

You didn’t get 6 figures in a year b/c you didn’t subtract your expenses, like how much did you earn IN PROFIT?

You really just gained millions because it was during the pandemmy and everyone had a stimulus check and money to blow.

CAN WE BE REAL!

My newest mission is to get real, and share my journey, and go back to when I used to be Gary Vee's community manager… best advice he ever gave… DOCUMENT DON’T CREATE…

I want to KNOW YOU, TRUST YOU, AND ACTUALLY LIKE YOUR ASS, but how can I do so when you are conforming to what everyone else is doing and using AI because you are too lazy to create… (IT IS A TOOL I USE IT, BUT WHAT HAPPENED TO YOUR MUCHNESS?)

I’ve always been the Unicorn in Marketing, and I fell into the trap as well b/c it seemed like it worked, but it doesn’t. I look like everyone else…

I Own a piece of land on road NH 332A 4500 Sq ft in Kalapet UT Pondicherry. The land is currently vacant. I am open to rental or development options. Please suggest based on local demand & feasibility.

I'm experimenting with it as we speak!

Lots of buttons to discover, a bit of configuring it all, but the first email campaigns have started sending.

Very curious about your experiences.

As social media professionals, we spend a lot of time building visibility and engagement — but one area that’s becoming increasingly important is digital footprint management.

Old posts, outdated campaigns, or even user-generated content tied to a brand can resurface years later. For individuals, it might be an offhand tweet; for businesses, it could be a poorly received campaign or press mention. Either way, these traces can quickly impact reputation and trust.

I’d like to open a discussion on best practices here: – Do you or your clients conduct regular audits of past content? – How do you approach removal when full deletion isn’t possible (e.g., reposts, screenshots, or third-party coverage)? – Have you found success with suppression/SEO techniques alongside platform management?

We have been developing tools to automate scanning and highlight at-risk content across platforms, but I’m very interested in hearing from others in this space: what’s working, what isn’t, and how are you preparing for the long- term challenges of digital permanence?

Slateclean.org

🚀 We’re a Design & Development Agency We help businesses transform complex ideas into simple, user-friendly, and high-converting digital experiences.

💡 What we do: • UI/UX Design – intuitive, conversion-focused interfaces • Branding & Logo Design – identities that inspire trust • Website Design & Development – seamless, scalable, and built with ReactJS (and more)

We don’t just design screens — we create experiences that build credibility, drive growth, and bring real results. And we back every design with code so it’s not just beautiful, it’s functional.

📂 Portfolio (in progress, but worth a look): https://test-solid-68106269.figma.site/

If you’re ready to scale your business with a partner who understands impact, let’s connect.

I'm asking as there has recently been quite a lot of discussion over how difficult the transition from university or college to employment is.

What are the main reasons you either have to let graduates go, or that make you desperate to keep them? What are some overestimated or underestimated qualities that you look for during and after those first 2-3 years?

Many thanks

I'm curious to know how do you manage your day-to-day work and how do you collaborate with your team.

• What tools and platforms do you use to communicate with your team and to manage projects.

• Do you Follow a specific workflow or framework (Agile, Kanban, List, etc).

• How do you make sure that tasks don't fall through the cracks.

Would you like to know what's working on for you.

In 2014, I launched a Shopify store in an adult niche (cannabis accessories). Everyone told me I was insane. "Illegal", "will never work", "you can't advertise". But I saw where the legalization trend was going and pushed forward anyway.

By 2016, we were doing $6M a year in revenue. 25,000 square foot warehouse, thousands of SKUs, private label containers arriving monthly, 60 full-time staff, free lunch, cold brew on tap, all that fun stuff. 99% of our traffic came from Google Search, because at the time, cannabis accessories were banned from every major ad platform. We ranked #1 for bongs, vaporizers, glass pipes, and pretty much every other high-intent keyword.

Then November 16, 2016, happened, one week before Black Friday. I woke up to $150 in sales instead of the $6,000 we’d normally have by mid-morning. Panic mode set in. The site was live, checkout worked, payment processor was fine. Then I checked Google Analytics and saw a 99% drop in traffic overnight.

Search Console revealed the problem: a manual penalty for link manipulation. The thing is, we had never bought backlinks. Someone had bought hundreds of thousands of spammy backlinks to our site in a targeted SEO attack, and it worked.

The next month was brutal. We laid off more than 50 employees. I was personally on the hook for a $25k a month lease (with a $60k salary because we were reinvesting EVERYTHING), and holding $1M in inventory with no way to move it.

Then came the pivot. We had the warehouse and the inventory, so I put together a quick landing page offering dropshipping to our competitors at 50% off retail. Word spread fast. Within a year, we were the main dropship supplier for the industry. I built custom software to handle the scale, keep inventory in sync, and manage fulfillment automatically.

Six months later, the manual penalty was lifted, and our SEO traffic started to come back, but I wasn’t about to give up the dropship revenue stream.

In 2021, a retail giant, High Tide Inc., approached us to buy our store. They didn’t want the software, so I spun it out into a new company, named it teamcamp.app , and marketed it as a "dropship automation software". Since then, we’ve done over $50M in GMV, became the largest B2B dropship platform for cannabis accessories, and built a whole new business out of what started as a complete disaster.

Sometimes the thing that nearly kills your business is the same thing that ends up saving it. When life blows up your plans, look for the pivot hiding in the wreckage. Don't let anything keep you down.

Hi everyone! I am 19 and currently studying at university. I am really motivated to start building real-world experience, but I feel a bit stuck in terms of direction. I am open to two main paths: Business ideas / small projects that I could realistically start as a student with limited capital. Work experience: I would be happy to work for someone (remotely or online) even for small pay, just to gain skills and be useful.

If anyone here has advice, ideas, or even a small project I could contribute to, I would really appreciate it. Think of it as me trading my time, energy, and enthusiasm for experience (and a little pay if possible).

I’m 16 and I’m trying to make a little plan for a business I want to start up. The main thing I am wondering is how do I advertise without it being so annoying? Are there better ways of locally advertising than just local media? I just want some pointers.

Hi all,

From the outside, being a CEO or senior leader looks pretty great. Big paychecks, influence, prestige. But I imagine there’s a very different reality behind the scenes.

If you’re (or have been) in that position, I’d love to know: what’s the hardest, most draining part of the job that outsiders don’t really understand? And if you could get one kind of support that would actually make it easier, what would it be?

Curious to hear your honest perspectives 🙏

Here are some objective stats from Wikipedia:

Largest stock markets in the world:

• New York Stock Exchange
• Nasdaq
• Shanghai
• Tokyo
• Fun fact: even the Toronto stock exchange is larger than the London stock exchange

Largest cities by GDP:

• New York
• Tokyo
• Los Angeles
• Seoul
• Paris

Cities with most Fortune 500:

• New York
• San Francisco
• Chicago
• Tokyo

Most expensive real estate in the world (according to Visual Capitalist):

• Monaco
• Hong Kong
• Singapore
• Geneva

…I don’t see London leading in any category. Is London still considered a financial “capital” because of legacy reasons because it’s not top 5 in any category.

Hey guys, I’m starting a small IPTV project with a friend. We’re looking for a Reseller Panel with credits/codes included (not just the panel alone). Budget: around $100–150 to start.

Can anyone recommend a reliable provider with good connections and a fair price? We want something stable, not just cheap.

Watching Rihanna expanding Fenty into multiple markets (cosmetics, haircare, fashion) has made me wonder:

Is it smarter to expand the existing business, or would it make more sense to start a second, separate brand to tap in to a new market?